Instead of making the trip to America, 33 Haitian children--many of them orphans-- remain on their island, fearful and uncertain about their future.

Meanwhile, the 10 Americans who planned to take them to new lives sit in jail, wondering how much trouble they're in.

They're expected to appear Thursday before a Haitian prosecutor who will decide whether or not to file charges against the group, Haiti's communication minister said.

"We believe we're been wrongly accused of something, human trafficking, which is completely not the truth," missionary Laura Silsby said.

The Baptist missionaries claim when they brought the kids from Haiti to the Dominican Republic, they didn't know they needed paperwork and passports.

But journalist Anne Christine D'Adeski says she told them.

"(I said) I really have to let you know that you are very likely to be stopped at the border and you may even be in trouble," she said. "I did warn them that people might regard them as traffickers. Yes."

Not all of the children are orphans. Some parents from a Haitian village released their children to the missionaries, hoping to give them a better life away from the earthquake's destruction.

"Unless there can be proof that they were really trying to exploit these kids, they won't be charged as child traffickers," Regent University family law professor Lynne Marie Kohm said.

Kohm added that a little precaution is in order in a country already sensitive about its poverty and the loss of its youth

"They didn't think before they leaped," she said. "Yes, they were trying to obey God, but wise counsel would've really helped them in this situation if they would've just consulted an attorney."

Many Haitian children are still legally making it to loving families in the United States. Americans trying to break through the bureaucracy to help more kids hope that the case of the missionaries won't set them back.